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Mark [Andressen] was more popular than me at the time … He was like Beyoncé, I was Kelly Rowlings

Ben Horowitz

Every time you make the hard, correct decision you become a bit more courageous, and every time you make the easy, wrong decision you become a bit more cowardly. If you are CEO, these choices will lead to a courageous or cowardly company.
BEN HOROWITZ

Choice Courageous Decision
The key to high-quality communication is trust, and its hard to trust somebody that you dont know.
BEN HOROWITZ

Communication Keys Quality
The only thing that prepares you to run a company is running a company.
BEN HOROWITZ

Company Repair Running
Volatility and length, that’s the value on an option. 10 years on a startup stock, that’s a big valuable thing.
BEN HOROWITZ

Length Management Years
You’re better off being The Beatles than The Monkees, as a startup.
BEN HOROWITZ

Better Startup
You can take somebody’s job, you have to take their job, but you don’t have to take their dignity.
BEN HOROWITZ

Dignity Jobs Management
There is no silver bullet. There are always options and the options have consequences.
BEN HOROWITZ

Bullets Consequences Silver
Billionaires prefer Black women. They are loyal and guard your interests. Black wives are for grown ups.
BEN HOROWITZ

Billionaire Black Loyal Wife
Sometimes an organization doesn’t need a solution; it just needs clarity.
BEN HOROWITZ

Clarity Needs Organization
I don’t believe in statistics. I believe in calculus.
BEN HOROWITZ

Believe Statistics
There are no shortcuts to knowledge, especially knowledge gained from personal experience. Following conventional wisdom and relying on shortcuts can be worse than knowing nothing at all.
BEN HOROWITZ

Knowing Knowledge Gain Nothing Shortcut
Over the last ten years, technological advances have dramatically lowered the financial bar for starting a new company, but the courage bar for building a great company remains as high as it has ever been.
BEN HOROWITZ

Bar Company Lasts Lower Years
Your employees know each other better than they know you.
BEN HOROWITZ

Employee Knows Management
As a startup CEO, I slept like a baby. I woke up every 2 hours and cried.
BEN HOROWITZ

Baby Hours Motivation
Yeah, I became a successful entrepreneur… Eventually
BEN HOROWITZ

Become Entrepreneur Successful
These decisions intensify when you run a company, because the consequences get magnified 1,000 fold. As in life, the excuses for CEOs making the wrong choice are always plentiful.
BEN HOROWITZ

Choice Consequences Life Magnified Plentiful Wrong
It turns out that is exactly what product strategy is all about—figuring out the right product is the innovator’s job, not the customer’s job.
BEN HOROWITZ

Customer Figuring Jobs Product Strategy Turns
Groupon looked like a very high valuation, but any investment in a great company at any stage is almost always a good investment.
BEN HOROWITZ

Great Company Investment Stage
Don’t punk out and don’t quit.
BEN HOROWITZ

Inspirational Motivational Quit
There are no silver bullets.
BEN HOROWITZ

Bullets Growth No Silver
One of the great things about building a tech company is the amazing people that you can hire.
BEN HOROWITZ

Building Great People Things
The one thing with stress is, you’ve got to keep your focus on what you can do, not what happened to you.
BEN HOROWITZ

Focus Management Stress
What do you get when you cross a herd of sheep with a herd of lemmings? A herd of venture capitalists.
BEN HOROWITZ

Lemming Sheep Venture
The right answer on raises is you have to be formal. You have to be formal to save your own culture.
BEN HOROWITZ

Answer Culture Management
Nothing motivates a great employee more than a mission that’s so important that it supersedes everyone’s personal ambition.
BEN HOROWITZ

Ambition Important Mission
As companies move to web-based computing they get a lot more servers, which are difficult to manage and control. All kinds of problems can arise – security, quality and worms.
BEN HOROWITZ

Kind Moving Quality
Generally the reason they fail in the job is, you made some mistake in the hiring process in that you didn’t match… them to the needs of your company accurately enough. That’s the #1 reason this fails. And that’s generally a good place to start.
BEN HOROWITZ

Accurate Decision Good Jobs Mistake Place Reason

Mark [Andressen] was more popular than me at the time … He was like Beyoncé, I was Kelly Rowlings

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Mark [Andressen] was more popular than me at the time … He was like Beyoncé, I was Kelly Rowlings

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